Help me choose an Nforce4 motherboard

[ZenoAT]

I'm in the process of putting together a new computer, but I just can't seem to find the right motherboard for me. Here are the other relevant parts I plan to get:

90 nm Athlon 64 3500+ (socket 939) with zalman CNPS7000B-CU cooler
160 GB Seagate SATA HD with NCQ
PCI express 6800 GT

So I'm looking for an Nforce4 board, either Ultra or SLI, and I have the following priorities for this build:

1) stable stable stable. I am not going to overclock and I don't want to deal with random freezing/reboots/blue screens/incompatibilities
2) Onboard sound should keep cpu usage to a minimum
3) Must not have issues with winchester (90nm) athlon 64
4) Must work with SATA NCQ hard drive
5) Must have relatively quiet chipset cooler that is not in the way of the graphics card
6) I'd like to buy from a first tier manufacturer, but this is just a psychological thing. I will try an "off" brand if it comes highly recommended.
7) Zalman cpu cooler has to fit.

You'd think this would be a relatively straightforward process, but looking around on the web I see problems with all these motherboards.

The MSI Neo4 SLI seems to have really good onboard sound, but it has issues with the winchester cpus and maybe with recognizing USB devices on startup. The non SLI does not appear to have as nice a sound chip. May have the same issues?
The Asus SLI seems to get a lot of complaints in general, including not working with NCQ and having a noisy fan. The Asus non-sli is too new to have many reviews yet.
The DFI seems to have a good probability of arriving broken in the box and a poll at amdmb indicates only 35% of the buyers are having no problems with the board.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[CheesePoofs]

I would recomend the DFI Ultra-d, as long as you get ram they have approved.

7) which zalman cooler are you referring to? I believe all fit, but the 7700s might block one of the ram sockets.

You might also want to look at one of gigabyte's boards. I don't know too much about them, but I haven't heard anything bad about them either.

 

[ZenoAT]

Thanks for the recommendation. The cooler I was thinking of is the Zalman CNPS7000B-CU (the 92mm one) . If the bigger one fit, that would be great, but I don't want to add that additional constraint to this decision

 

[housecat]

I've had the Asus. Its a good board, I believe most of the complaints are PEBKAC errors myself.

The DFI is what I'm goign too. I like the voltages and their onboard sound solution. Plus it looks cool, thats a bonus.

I believe most issues are PEBKAC.. cheap parts, bad PSU.. its almost always PEBKAC my friend.

The real issues will be well documented, and you'll be able to tell if its legit or not.. you'll have a ton of ppl reporting it, not just one or two bozos popping in once in a while with some strange story

 

[Mucker]

DFI nF4 Ultra-D is top flight. Mine arrived from Newegg last week in perfect condition with the 1/25 bios (now it's 3/10). I put a 939 3500+ on it, some Corsair VS (2x512) slots 2&4, and an ATI x800xl and it fired right up without a hiccup. I have had Asus, Abit, Epox, to name a few. This board is by far the best I've had. Tons of features, quality components, heatsinks on the mofsets, it's way impressive. It does require 4 power plugs to the board though (something to keep in mind):

24 pin ATX
4 pin ATX
4 pin molex
4 pin floppy power connector

Sweet board all the way around....

m

 

[Promethply]

According to your requirements:

"1) stable stable stable. I am not going to overclock and I don't want to deal with random freezing/reboots/blue screens/incompatibilities"

The ASUS A8N-SLI/A8N-SLI deluxe is very stable in my experience.

"2) Onboard sound should keep cpu usage to a minimum"

After downloading and installing the newest NVidia NForce 6.53 standalone NF4 drivers with the Nvidia sound drivers included, the CPU usage has been decrease to around 7% when playing MP3 files.

"3) Must not have issues with winchester (90nm) athlon 64"

No issues whatsoever with the latest BIOS.

"4) Must work with SATA NCQ hard drive"

The NF4 chipset supports SATA NCQ

"5) Must have relatively quiet chipset cooler that is not in the way of the graphics card"

Well, all NF4 mobos seems to come with tiny 4cm fans.

"6) I'd like to buy from a first tier manufacturer, but this is just a psychological thing. I will try an "off" brand if it comes highly recommended."

ASUS is first tier

"7) Zalman cpu cooler has to fit."

According to Zalman, the cooler fits this motherboard.

Hope these helps

 

[jenneth]

The NF4 chipset supports SATA NCQ

So, the SATA/NCQ-NF4 incompatibility issue has been resolved then?

 

[Promethply]

I'm not aware of any SATA - NCQ incompatibility issue with the NF4 chipset.

Currently using a Seagate 7200.8 300Gb SATA for storage, and it works fine with either NCQ enabled or disabled on my ASUS A8N-SLI with the 1003s.1002 bios.

Chose to disable NCQ though, since with NCQ enabled, this harddrive is slower in HDTach benchmark.

 

[jenneth]

I'm not aware of any SATA - NCQ incompatibility issue with the NF4 chipset. Currently using a Seagate 7200.8 300Gb SATA for storage, and it works fine with either NCQ enabled or disabled on my ASUS A8N-SLI with the 1003s.1002 bios. Chose to disable NCQ though, since with NCQ enabled, this harddrive is slower in HDTach benchmark.

That's good to know. Many people seemed to ran into problem when they turned on the NCQ setting on their SATA drives (i.e. file corruption...).

I do have a question though, did you noticed any difference (performance-wise) after you turned off NCQ?

Thanks.

 

[Promethply]

No, I can't actually notice any difference between NCQ enabled or NCQ disabled, but I suppose psychologically, I "think" that it is faster with NCQ disabled since the HDTach showed a faster benchmark with it disabled.